Score a victory for Rob Manfred, for Tony Clark, and for baseball in the first real moves made together by the new commissioner and director of the MLB Players Association. After years of dragging their feet on a common sense issue, the league and its players have agreed to stop dragging their feet on the field.

While not everyone agrees that baseball games take too long, there is consensus that time is wasted, and rule changes announced recently address that problem without altering the game's framework. It's all positive, with no catch.

In the most noticeable change, batters will be required to keep one foot in the box between pitches (except after swings), already a rule in the minor leagues and something that should not bother anyone, given that Nomar Garciaparra no longer is an active player with his endless equipment adjustment routine. There is no reason for batters to wander around between pitches, so now they will be ready to hit sooner, and pitchers will be able to keep the game moving.

The complementary rule to this, introducing pitch clocks to force pitchers to be just as ready as hitters, has not been introduced yet.

At some point, hopefully next winter when Manfred has had a full season on the job, it should, because the clocks would not be a fundamental change except to those who blindly say "baseball is a game with no clock."

This is not true, as Rule 8.04 mandates a 12-second limit between pitches "when the pitcher is in possession of the ball and the batter is in the box, alert to the pitcher." It's just that this clock is invisible, with time kept by the umpires, and Rule 8.04 is never enforced.

For those who still say there are no clocks in baseball, Friday changes that, because there will be a clock, displayed between innings on outfield scoreboards and on the façade near the press box, to count down the time between innings.

Preparation for new half-innings will begin when the clock, tracking the amount of time used for TV advertisements, reaches 40 seconds — that is when the batter will be introduced and walk-up music played.

Getting rid of walk-up music would be another way to shave seconds off a baseball game, but who really cares?

Tweaks also have been made to the instant replay system, including managers being allowed to initiate challenges from the dugout and the expansion of reviewable calls to include seeing if a runner left the base too soon on a tag-up play. This is more common sense.

A complaint that these changes are happening does not recognize that baseball has issues that can be easily corrected.

There is a case to be made, with pitch clocks and with the idea that replay ought to include all calls if the intent is to get rulings correct, that these changes do not go far enough.